


Madison Sinclair, This is Your Life (Backwards and in Technicolor)

by igrockspock



Category: Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Family, Family Secrets, Gen, Madison Sinclair has feelings too, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 18:12:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4110325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is full of stupid accidents: you get switched at birth and find out by mistake.  You see a red light and hit the accelerator instead of slamming on the brakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Madison Sinclair, This is Your Life (Backwards and in Technicolor)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Querulousgawks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Who have trespassed against us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2033850) by [Querulousgawks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks). 



> Okay, QuerulousGawks, it's confession time: I love your stories so much that I manipulated my sign up in the hopes that you would be my remixee, an it totally worked! "Who Have Trespassed Against Us" is a completely amazing story, and I really hope you think I did it justice.

Madison Sinclair dies because of the two-for-one special at Victoria's Tanning Hut.

She's gotten three tickets for texting and driving in the last six months and ugh, how many points did that put on her driver's license? She doesn't even know. So she probably shouldn't look at her phone at all, but Shelly Pomeroy told her Gia Goodman's future Senator boyfriend is totally gay and there are pictures to prove it. So sue her -- or write her a ticket or whatever -- but enquiring minds want to know, especially if there's going to be drama at the reunion.

But it's not Shelly messaging her with all the good gossip. It's some white trash tanning salon sending her their specials, and _seriously_ , how had she gotten on their list? She spray tans, thank you very much. Tanning beds basically guarantee that you'll die young, with weird leathery skin and cancer moles. Yech. Wouldn't _that_ be an ugly way to go?

That's what she's thinking about when she looks up and sees the light is red, and fuck, it's too late to stop now. Better to floor it and get out of the intersection as fast as she can, that's what her dad had always --

There is no white light, just the the sound of metal crunching on metal and something that might be a scream.

***

Madison wakes up on the floor of her sister Lauren's dorm room. Her head hurts. Her whole body hurts, and in the back of her mind there's an image of a red light and a speeding truck. When she opens her eyes, she's half expecting to see an ambulance or shattered glass or something, but it's just Lauren's dorm room, looking the same as it has every other weekend she's visited. There's a red and white Stanford pennant fluttering on the wall. The bed is made, and Corduroy, the teddy bear Madison had rejected on her eleventh birthday, is sitting in the middle of the pillow. Lauren had loved it, of course.

Madison drags herself off the pallet on the floor just before her Lauren pokes her with the toe of her pink ballet flat. Ugh. Those are _so_ 2007\. 

"You screamed when you woke up," Lauren says, peering at Madison intently. "Are you okay?" 

No. Madison is _not_ okay. She doesn't even _know_ when she was last okay. Probably when Grandpa Sinclair needed a kidney, and Madison wasn't a compatible donor because -- news flash -- it turns out she has no biological relationship to the people she's been calling Mom and Dad. She is _so_ not talking about that, even though it's probably the reason she can't shake this weird feeling that she isn't really here. It's like her mind is here and her body is somewhere else -- or like she took something last night, but sweet, responsible Lauren would never let her do something like _drugs_.

"What are we doing tonight, sister dear?" she asks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. The clock on the bedside table says 11:43. "Actually, don't answer. I get to pick tonight."

She rifles through the flyers stacked on the corner of Lauren's desk. "Vegan Brunch Society? _Please_ tell me you at least still shave your armpits. Women in Technology, yech. I mean, I respect your desire to make a fuck ton of money, but no way is _that_ a fun group. Wait, what's this?" Madison pulls a bright orange flyer from the bottom of the pile. "Sigma Alpha Midterm Bash? Is this a frat party?"

"Some guy handed it to me on the quad," Lauren says, sounding almost apologetic. "I thought maybe you would want to..."

"You picked this up for me?" Madison grins. Now _that's_ the sisterly bonding she's waited five campus visits for. She plucks the glasses off Lauren's face. "We are totally going, and I am totally doing your makeup."

Giving Lauren a makeover is harder than Madison thought it would be; their coloring is so different none of Madison's makeup works -- which makes sense, now that Madison knows they're not _supposed_ to look alike -- and Lauren refuses to go to Neiman Marcus to get any of her own. Because she has to study. On _Saturday_.

"You need to be less uptight," Madison says, sliding away a textbook covered with esoteric mathematical symbols.

"And you need to be less vapid," Lauren says, snatching the textbook right back. "Vapid, by the way, means shallow."

"Thanks, Mom made me do the SAT review book too," Madison says, feigning a wounded expression. Actually, Mom had made her do three review books, but Madison was still the only Sinclair in history to make a less than average score. Whatever. She's over it. The disappointment is easier to swallow now that she knows she's not really theirs.

Anyway, thank god Madison had packed for two. Lauren's got nothing but weird thrift store clothes, but Madison had thrown an extra tube skirt and a tank top in her bag, just in case Lauren _finally_ agreed to do something cool. And the party _is_ cool -- sort of, anyway. Madison moved past the frat scene ages ago, when she figured out you were really better off fucking guys at least five years older than you. Bigger paychecks, better technique. Except Logan Echolls, but there's always an exception for the ex-boyfriend of your arch nemesis. 

She's about to deliver this little bon mot of sisterly wisdom to Lauren, who's standing in a little circle of guys in the corner of the room, but something's wrong. Yeah, the guys are hot, but Lauren's body is all rigid and she's got her back pressed up against the wall like she's trying to escape but there's nowhere to go. 

"You don't have to be so uptight," one of the guys is saying. He's holding out a drink that Lauren obviously doesn't want to take. "Come on, I can give you something to help you relax."

"I don't think so, dickhole," Madison says, covering the distance between them in about two steps. She twists the guy's wrist back so the drink spills all over his pants, and he shrieks like Madison's cousin when she twisted the head off her favorite Barbie. Pole dancing classes have really done a lot for her grip strength.

And miracle of miracles, even Lauren looks impressed.

"Come on sister," she says, looping her arm around Lauren's shoulders. "This party sucks. We're going home."

There's more she wants to say, like how fucking impossible it is to feel at home in Neptune now that she knows her whole life there was a lie, and how weird it is that your sister can still be your sister even when your parents don't feel like your parents anymore. But the words don't come out. She hears a siren in the distance, and when she turns to look at it, she splits in two. Half of her goes on walking with her sister through the night while the rest of her -- the one with the crunching metal and the scream -- falls backward into the dark.

***

Madison wakes up on family movie night. _Ugh._ How had she gotten here? She _hates_ movie night. She fucking runs Neptune High School, but one night a week, she's stuck on the couch feeling dumb because she doesn't understand Fettuccine or Fellini whatever his name is. It's like those worksheets they used to give you in elementary school, the ones where you had to circle the thing that didn't belong with everything else. Once she drew herself in and circled it, and then she had to visit the counselor's office every Friday for six weeks.

These days, she's got better coping skills, like stretching out her legs so that nobody else can sit on the sofa.

"If this is family night, I don't understand why we can't do something _I_ want to do," Madison says, picking at the felafel Lauren had insisted on ordering. It's _fried_. Disgusting.

Lauren turns back and smirks. "So Madison night would be what, nachos and NASCAR?"

" _As if_ ," Madison snaps. Everyone knows nachos are fattening and NASCAR is for rednecks with pedophile mustaches. 

Lauren turns back to her, and Madison rolls her eyes preemptively. She knows _exactly_ what Lauren's going to say: _if you don't want me to treat you like a dumb bitch, don't act like a dumb bitch._ Whatever. It might have stung a little the first three or four times, but by now it's just stale.

But when Lauren speaks, her voice is too old and too deep. "Stay with us, honey," she says, and suddenly the room is filled with bright white light.

Madison puts up a hand to shield her eyes and someone catches it, but it's not her sister. She yells for Mom and Dad, but neither of them take their eyes off the TV. It's like she's not even here anymore.

"Pupils are non-responsive," Lauren says in her creepy deep voice. 

The light goes out, and Madison is falling backward again.

***

It's Thanksgiving; Madison can smell the turkey even before they walk into her grandmother's house. And really, Madison shouldn't have even bothered coming in. As soon as they walk through the door, it's all _my goodness isn't Lauren growing up?_ and _she looks just like Frank when he was that age_ and _just like Grandmother too_. Madison might as well not exist, which is totally unfair because she's really rocking the whole Catholic school girl trend. Mom and Dad really ought to give up on this whole shitty public school thing and send her to St. Mary's for junior high like everyone else.

She poses by the kitchen door for awhile, but when nobody looks at her, she finally asks, "So who do I look like?"

Then there's this totally awkward silence where her mom and dad look at each other, and her grandma and her aunts look back at them. Madison always thought she was cute, the kind of cute that would turn into hot later on when she got boobs, but the uneasy silence that descends on the room makes her wonder if she's ugly. Maybe she was wrong; maybe nobody's ever said she looks like anyone in the family because no one _wants_ to look like her.

Finally Grandma says, "You know, I believe you look just like Aunt Beatrice when she was your age." 

Everybody nods enthusiastically, but no matter how hard Madison squints, she can't see the resemblance. Then Grandma gets her special smile, the one that means she's about to say something really mean. Madison practices it alone in the bathroom mirror sometimes because she has a feeling she'll need it for high school.

"Of course, that was before she froze her face with all that botox," she says, patting Madison on the shoulder. "I'll get you a picture after dinner."

Grandma never gets her the picture, but Aunt Bea presents them with matching headbands after everyone is finished with their second helping of pie -- well, everyone except for Madison, of course. She'd only had a tiny wedge of pumpkin with the fat free frozen yogurt she'd brought from home. No thunder thighs for her, thank you very much.

Aunt Bea makes them put the headbands on, and they're actually pretty cute. They totally go with the whole school girl trend, and Madison's thinking it wouldn't be that bad to look like Aunt Bea. She's pretty stylish, even if the botox had made her look like an alien.

"I was saving these for Christmas, but I just couldn't wait!" Aunt Bea exclaims. "Now you two look just alike!"

Madison pretends to smile, but when Lauren walks past her on the stairs, she snatches the headband right out of her sister's hair. Madison doesn't _need_ to look like anyone else, and nobody _gets_ to look like her.

And suddenly Madison is splitting in half again. The memory Madison, the one who'd taken the headband, is throwing it in the trash while the rest of her is left behind to watch Lauren's chin tremble and her eyes fill up with tears. Madison reaches toward her -- it wouldn't be hard to make it better -- but Lauren walks right past her like she isn't even there.

Now there's a steady, rhythmic pounding on her chest and a voice in the background counting out _one, two, three, four, five_ over and over again. There's a fire going in the fireplace -- Madison remembers watching her father make it -- but the warmth can't reach her, and fingers of ice are spreading through her veins. 

The house is falling apart again, but Madison won't go. The kitchen door is just a few inches away, and she strains toward it. Her fingers graze the wood, and the door swings open even though she can't feel it under her skin.

But the kitchen isn't on the other side. It's her backyard, her seventh birthday party. The cake has seven tiers for seven years, each one covered in bright pink frosting trimmed with little puffs of white. 

Mom is angry and Dad is laughing and Madison is standing in between them, watching a pair of fake Cole Haan loafers sink down to the bottom of the pool.

Dad gets down on one knee so he can look her in the eye and says, "She's a real Sinclair, alright! Nothing but the best for my little girl! What say we go get some ice cream and the _right_ pair of shoes?"

Her father -- and he _is_ her father, she can see that now -- holds out his hand, and she takes it. His calluses are rough against her skin, but for once, she squeezes tighter instead of pulling back. The world is fading again. The pounding on her chest stops, and the counting voice is gone. One step and the floor disappears; another step and the yard is gone. The cake and the presents vanish, and then Aunt Bea and Grandma and Mom fade away, one by one, until it's just her and Dad walking upward into the mist. She can still feel his hand curled around hers, but she doesn't dare look up in case his face is gone.

They stop in a baby's room. It's like they're on the ceiling, looking down. And then, at last, her father is gone. He's standing next to Mom now, looking down at the baby in the crib.

"I don't care what the hospital says," Mom is saying. " _This_ is Madison Sinclair. _This_ is our daughter. I don't want anyone else."


End file.
